The Birds (film)

The Birds

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by Evan Hunter
Based on The Birds
by Daphne du Maurier
Starring Tippi Hedren
Rod Taylor
Jessica Tandy
Suzanne Pleshette
Veronica Cartwright
Cinematography Robert Burks, ASC
Edited by George Tomasini
Production
company
Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates
  • March 28, 1963 (1963-03-28)
Running time
 119 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3.3 million[1]
Box office $11.4 million[2]
Birds invade the Brenner house

The Birds is a 1963 American horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the 1952 story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. It focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California over the course of a few days.

The film stars Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, in her screen debut, supported by Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Veronica Cartwright. The screenplay is by Evan Hunter, who was told by Hitchcock to develop new characters and a more elaborate plot while keeping du Maurier's title and concept of unexplained bird attacks.

Plot

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a young socialite known for rather racy behavior and playing pranks, meets lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a San Francisco bird shop. He wants to purchase a pair of lovebirds for his sister's eleventh birthday, but the shop has none. He had seen her in court once before when her recklessness resulted in the breaking of a plate-glass window, but she does not know him; attracted, he plays a prank by pretending to mistake her for a salesperson. She is infuriated when she discovers this, even though she also likes to play practical jokes. Then, intrigued by his veiled advance, she finds his weekend address in Bodega Bay, purchases a pair of lovebirds, and makes the long drive to deliver them. Discovering he is not there, she leaves the birdcage inside the Brenner family home, with a note. He spots her on the water through a pair of binoculars during her retreat, and races across the bay to head her off. She is attacked near shore on the town side and injured by a seagull. He invites her to dinner, and she hesitantly agrees.

Melanie gets to know Mitch, his alternately domineering and needy mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy), and his younger sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). She also befriends local schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), Mitch's ex-lover. When she spends the night at Annie's house they are startled by a loud thud; a gull has killed itself by flying into the front door. At Cathy's birthday party the next day, the guests are set upon by seagulls. The following evening, sparrows invade the Brenner home through the chimney. The next morning, Lydia, a widow who still sees to the family farmstead, pays a visit to a neighboring farmer to discuss the unusual behavior of her chickens. Finding his eyeless corpse pecked lifeless by birds, she flees in terror. After being comforted by Melanie and Mitch, she expresses concern for Cathy's safety at school. Melanie drives there and waits for class to end, unaware that a large murder of crows are massing in the nearby playground. Unnerved when she sees its jungle gym covered by them, she warns Annie, and they evacuate the children. The commotion stirs the crows into attacking, injuring several of the children. A young girl is seriously injured after being felled by the crows, her eyeglasses shattering. She calls on Cathy for help and Melanie pushes them into a parked car, blasting the horn as crows engulf the vehicle.

Melanie calls her father's newspaper from The Tides restaurant. Several patrons describe their own encounters with aggressive bird behavior. An amateur ornithologist dismisses the reports as fanciful and argues with Melanie over them. Mitch arrives with the sheriff and corroborates Melanie's claims. As the patrons argue about the likelihood of such ornithological behavior, Melanie notices birds swooping at a man across at the gas station. She alerts the others and they witness the man knocked unconscious while filling a car with fuel, which spills out onto the street. As the patrons run outside to assist, unaware of the danger, a bystander attempts to light a cigar, igniting a pool of gas and becoming incinerated. The explosion attracts a mass of gulls, which begin to swarm menacingly as townsfolk attempt to tackle the fire. Masses of birds launch an attack, causing serious injury and traffic collisions. Melanie is forced to take refuge in a phone booth, which is pummeled by birds, shattering the glass. We see her point of view as the town descends into chaos - a horse and cart topples its load as crows ravage the horses, an out-of-control car crashes into the burning vehicles as the driver is attacked by gulls, a bloodied man staggers helplessly against the phone booth doors as he is ravaged. Melanie is eventually rescued by Mitch and they return to the restaurant, where Melanie is accused of causing the attacks, which began with her arrival. Melanie slaps the increasingly hysterical mother, shocking her back to reality. During a lull in the bird attacks, Mitch and Melanie return to Annie's house and find that she has been killed by the crows while ushering Cathy to safety.

Melanie and the Brenners seek refuge inside the family home. Mitch and Melanie work together, Melanie handing planks up to Mitch, who nails the planks over the windows. That night, the home is attacked by waves of birds, injuring Mitch's hand and arm. During a nighttime lull between attacks, Melanie hears the sound of fluttering wings; not wanting to disturb the others' sleep, she enters the kitchen and sees that the lovebirds are sedentary. The sounds are emanating from above. She cautiously climbs the staircase and enters the first bedroom, where she sees that the birds have broken through the roof. They violently attack her, trapping her in the room until Mitch comes to her rescue. She is badly injured and in shock. Mitch insists they must get her to the hospital, suggesting they drive to San Francisco despite the risk. The radio reports the spread of bird attacks to nearby communities, and suggests that "the military" may be required to intervene because civil authorities are unable to cope. Reports are that most Bodega Bay residents have fled the community. When Mitch looks outside, it is dawn and a sea of birds ripples menacingly around the Brenner house as he prepares Melanie's car for their escape. Lydia cradles Melanie in the backseat, where the camera captures a child-like look of gratitude on Melanie's face as she gazes up into the now-maternal visage of Mitch's mother Lydia. In the final shot, the car carrying Melanie, Mitch, Lydia, Cathy, and the lovebirds slowly makes its way through a landscape in which thousands of birds perch ominously.

Cast

Production

Development

On August 18, 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to the local Santa Cruz Sentinel, Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller".[4] At the end of the same month, he hired Evan Hunter to adapt Daphne du Maurier's novella, "The Birds", first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree.[5] Hunter had previously written "Vicious Circle" for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which he adapted for the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.[6] He also adapted Robert Turner's story "Appointment at Eleven" for the same television series.[5] Hunter later suspected that he was hired because he had demonstrated he could write suspense (with the 87th Precinct novels, as Ed McBain) and because his novel The Blackboard Jungle had received critical acclaim.[7] The relationship between Hunter and Hitchcock during the creation of The Birds was documented by the writer in his 1997 autobiography Me and Hitch, which contains a variety of correspondence between the writer, director and Hitchcock's assistant, Peggy Robertson.[8]

American audiences had been treated to a version of the story a decade earlier on Hollywood (Lux) Radio Theatre (1953). It followed the book much more closely than the film. Herbert Marshall starred in the lead role, with the story taking place in England. Hunter began working on the screenplay in September 1961.[9] He and Hitchcock developed the story, suggesting foundations such as the townspeople having a guilty secret to hide, and the birds an instrument of punishment.[10] He suggested that the film begin using some elements borrowed from the screwball comedy genre then have it evolve into "stark terror".[11][12][13] This appealed to Hitchcock, according to the writer, because it conformed to his love of suspense: the title and the publicity would have already informed the audience that birds attack, but they do not know when. The initial humor followed by horror would turn the suspense into shock.[10]

Hitchcock solicited comments from several people regarding the first draft of Hunter's screenplay. Consolidating their criticisms, Hitchcock wrote to Hunter, suggesting that the script (particularly the first part) was too long, contained insufficient characterization in the two leads, and that some scenes lacked drama and audience interest.[14] Hitchcock at later stages consulted with his friends Hume Cronyn (whose wife Jessica Tandy was playing Lydia) and V.S. Pritchett, who both offered lengthy reflections on the work.[15]

Soundtrack

Many of the sound effects were created on the Mixtur-Trautonium, an electronic musical instrument developed by Oskar Sala.

Hitchcock decided to do without any conventional incidental score.[16] Instead, he made use of sound effects and sparse source music in counterpoint to calculated silences. He wanted to use the electroacoustic Mixtur-Trautonium to create the birdcalls and noises. He had first encountered this predecessor to the synthesizer on Berlin radio in the late 1920s. It was invented by Friedrich Trautwein and further developed by Oskar Sala into the Trautonium, which would create some of the bird sounds for this film.[17][18][19]

The director commissioned Sala and Remi Gassmann to design an electronic soundtrack.[16] They are credited with "electronic sound production and composition", and Hitchcock's previous musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann is credited as "sound consultant".

Source music includes the first of Claude Debussy's Deux arabesques, which Tippi Hedren's character plays on piano, and "Risseldy Rosseldy", an Americanized version[20] of the Scottish folk song "Wee Cooper O'Fife", which is sung by the schoolchildren.

Special effects

The special effects shots of the attacking birds were done at Walt Disney Studios by animator/technician Ub Iwerks, who used the sodium vapor process ("yellow screen") which he had helped to develop. The SV process films the subject against a screen lit with narrow-spectrum sodium vapor lights. Unlike most compositing processes, SVP actually shoots two separate elements of the footage simultaneously using a beam-splitter. One reel is regular film stock and the other a film stock with emulsion sensitive only to the sodium vapor wavelength. This results in very precise matte shots compared to blue screen special effects, necessary due to "fringing" of the image from the birds' rapid wing flapping.[21]

Premiere and awards

The film premiered March 28, 1963 in New York City. The Museum of Modern Art hosted an invitation-only screening as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock's film work. The MOMA series had a booklet with a monograph on the director written by Peter Bogdanovich. The film was screened out of competition in May at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival[22] with Hitchcock and Hedren in attendance.

Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects. The winner that year was Cleopatra. Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer. The film ranked No. 1 of the top 10 foreign films selected by the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. Hitchcock also received the Association's Director Award for the film.[23]

It also won the Horror Hall of Fame Award in 1991.[24]

Reception and interpretation

The Birds received critical acclaim. In recent years it has received a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 96%, with the consensus: "Proving once again that build-up is the key to suspense, Hitchcock successfully turned birds into some of the most terrifying villains in horror history."[25] Film critic David Thomson refers to it as Hitchcock's "last unflawed film".[26]

Humanities scholar Camille Paglia wrote a monograph about the film for the BFI Film Classics series. She interprets it as an ode to the many facets of female sexuality and, by extension, nature itself. She notes that women play pivotal roles in it. Mitch is defined by his relationships with his mother, sister, and ex-lover – a careful balance which is disrupted by his attraction to the beautiful Melanie.[27]

The film was honored by the American Film Institute as the seventh greatest thriller and Bravo awarded it the 96th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" for the scene when the birds attack the town.[28]

Sequel and remake

Tippi Hedren on the set of The Birds II: Land's End (1994)

An unrelated sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, was released in 1994, with different actors. It was a direct-to-television film and received negative reviews. Its director, Rick Rosenthal, removed his name from it, opting to use the Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee.[29] Hedren appeared in a supporting role, but not as her original character.

In October 2007, Variety reported that Naomi Watts would star in Universal's remake of the film, which would be directed by Casino Royale director Martin Campbell. The production would be a joint venture by Platinum Dunes and Mandalay Pictures.[30] Hedren stated her opposition to the remake, saying, "Why would you do that? Why? I mean, can't we find new stories, new things to do?"[31] However, since 2007, development has been stalled. On June 16, 2009, Brad Fuller of Dimension Films stated that no further developments had taken place, commenting, "We keep trying, but I don't know."[32] Eventually, in December 2009, Martin Campbell was replaced as director by Dennis Iliadis.[33][34]

Several shooting scenes from the film are reenacted in The Girl, a 2012 HBO/BBC film that gives a version of the relationship between Hitchcock and Hedren.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stafford, Jeff. "The Birds". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved September 30, 2012.
  2. ↑ Box Office Information for The Birds. The Numbers. Retrieved September 5, 2013.
  3. ↑ McCarthy, Michael (February 5, 2009). "Final cut for Hollywood's favorite dog". The Independent. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
  4. ↑ Trabing, Wally (August 21, 1961). "Alfred Hitchcock Using Sentinel's Seabird Story". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. 4.
  5. 1 2 Hunter 1997b, p. 26
  6. ↑ Chandler 2005, p. 269
  7. ↑ Hunter 1997b, p. 30
  8. ↑ Hunter 1997a
    This short book was adapted by Sight & Sound in its June 1997 edition.
  9. ↑ Hunter 1997b, p. 27
  10. 1 2 Hunter 1997b, p. 29
  11. ↑ Mcgilligan, p. 616
  12. ↑ Raubicheck & Srebnick 2011, p. 92
  13. ↑ Gottlieb & Allen 2009, p. 23
  14. ↑ Auiler 1999, pp. 207–9
  15. ↑ Auiler 1999, pp. 209–217
  16. 1 2 Auiler 1999, p. 516
  17. ↑ "The Birds". TCM. Retrieved June 20, 2012.
  18. ↑ "Blue" Gene Tyranny. "All Music Guide". AllMusic. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
  19. ↑ Pinch & Trocco 2004, p. 54
  20. ↑ Nickety Nackety Now Now Now on YouTube sung by early country music singer Chubby Parker, recorded on Silvertone Records in 1927.
  21. ↑ "Top SFX shots No.6: The Birds". Den of Geek. Retrieved January 2, 2009.
  22. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: The Birds". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
  23. ↑ "69th & 70th Annual Hero Honda Bengal Film Journalists' Association (B.F.J.A.) Awards 2007-Past Winners List 1964". Archived from the original on February 21, 2008. Retrieved March 10, 2008.
  24. ↑ "Eek! Now There's A Hall of Fame For Horror Films". Sun Sentinel. Retrieved October 5, 2014.
  25. ↑ The Birds at Rotten Tomatoes
  26. ↑ Thompson 2008, p. 97
  27. ↑ Paglia 1998
  28. ↑ "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments". BravoTV.com. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
  29. ↑ Tucker, Ken (March 18, 1994). "TV Review – The Birds II: Lands End". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved July 22, 2012.
  30. ↑ Graser, Marc; Siegel, Tatiana (October 18, 2007). "Naomi Watts set for 'Birds' remake". Variety. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
  31. ↑ Adler, Shawn (October 16, 2007). "Original Scream Queen Decries 'Birds' Remake As Foul". MTV. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
  32. ↑ ""The Birds" Remake May Not Happen". Worst Previews.com.
  33. ↑ "'The Birds' Remake Gets A New Director?". Screenrant.com. December 3, 2009. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
  34. ↑ "Rumor Control: 'The Birds' Remake Begins at the 'Last House on the Left'?". Bloody-disgusting.com. Retrieved August 29, 2010.

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